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Day 2 of our little jaunt through the south took us to dollywood. I have to admit, I had visions of Dolly shaped fries, dolly shaped cups, dolly music anywhere the ear could hear, your basic personal franchising nightmare. Instead – well, it was actually a lot of fun. Your standard fare, though prices were surprising modest for a theme park, and there was so much for the kids to do that it was a little more than amazing. Katy got to ride roller coasters, rapids, and a ton of rides, some without adults, some with, but all in all she had an absolute blast.

Day 3 was a nice(?) drive through tennessee and part of alabama to catch up with my folks. A little hotel fiasco later (our reservations weren’t at the hotel we thought they were), but all in all a quiet day.

Day 4 (today) was spent in part at the local botannical garden. Every entry penney was worth letting Katy and Anna stroll through the buttefly garden, a greenhouse geared towards sustaining a population of butterflies (though I think a few of those were moths, but still). They loved it. The park also had a spaced out set of cool down stations for the kids (elaborate sprinkler systems basically). All in all a great day.

Rest of the day was quiet. The kids are tired of the eating out game, tired of being on the road, and its starting to show. Katy fell asleep on the way to dinner tonight, and didn’t wake up well (aka: grouchy, tantrum, angry at the universe in general, threw a fit and made a scene). While embarassed, I have to side with her on this – they have done so well this week, been on their best behaviour all week, always doing like we ask, standing in lines, being on “display,” that I can understand completely that by the end of day 4 we had a melt down. We’re all sitting in the hotel room right now, I think somewhat shunned by my folks. Tomorrow is the big birthday party for my dad, then we head back on the road for the 13+ hour trip back home. I know that its going to take longer – thats 13 hours if we didn’t stop anywhere, and there’s no way we’re going to get away with that. I’m thankfull I took monday off – a day to help the kids calm down and unwind. I think we’re going to be forced to do a morning trip to richmond to get copies of birth certificates for an anticipated flight to canada, but i still don’t know if i can share the details on that one 🙂

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Day 1 involved a lot of driving – the first third of the total 25 hours of drive time we’ll have this vacation. We met up with the inlaws, had lunch at the hardrock cafe (remember when the hardrock cafe had the most expensive burgers in town?? now with everyone else being so expensive, it was actually a reasonable price), then went off to the aquarium. Now I’ve been to the aquarium in baltimore, which is supposed to be all that, but I’m here to tell you, burried out here in tenessee was a really awesome time. The exhibits were amazing, and the rolling sidewalk part deserves mention. You get to stand on a sidewalk and be slowly corkscrewed through a glass tunnel in middle of a pool of sharks, stingrays, etc. *wow* – never in my life did I think I would look up to see a large shark laying on the glass tube your in, waiting for you. and its alive. and breathing. and the teeth are moving. Or the tiger sharks passing within inches of your face, close enough to see the rows of teeth in the gaping mouth, and to be able to tell who’s the boy sharks and who’s the girl sharks 😉

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Caught up in the flurry of activity over finally renewing my domain (yes, I stayed with network solutions, not for price or anything sensible, just for speed/ease so I didn’t forget – maybe next year will be the godaddy year), I went ahead and did the unthinkable – if you aren’t sending mail directly to me, then you aren’t sending it anywhere. I’ve dropped the global catch all on mail to the domain, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to drop a few thousand spam-a-day messages, at least back down to a manageable hundred or so 🙂